The Society of Saint Gregory the Great is a membership association of Catholic laity formed in 2008 to promote divine worship in accordance with the Supreme Magisterium of the Church. The Society has its own schola cantorum, and regularly sponsors presentations and workshops on the Sacred Liturgy, Gregorian chant, and sacred polyphony.

Friday, May 11, 2012

What is Moral Relativism?

Moral relativism
is the belief that there are no universal, immutable standards by which to
judge human behavior. Up until the time of the early Renaissance, moral
absolutes were almost universally accepted. And most of the people in the
Western world were Christians, who sought their moral values from Scripture and
Tradition of the Roman Catholic Church.

The Reformation
opened the door to questioning the truths of Christianity and substituting
individual judgment for previously accepted standards. First the Enlightenment,
with its new emphasis on science and human learning, and then later
philosophers began to ignore a foundation of natural rights based on the
dignity of man and the norms of the
Creator.

“The legal
positivists, stemming from Spinoza, Hobbes, and Rousseau, hold that human rights
is a social contract, often expressed by a written constitution, but admit no
higher law.”[1]

The Christian, on
the other hand, accepts the ideals of truth and goodness, handed down by God to
his creatures. He guides his life by standards that do not change, even if the
application of those ideals is sometimes hard work. Abandoning this view has
caused much of the confusion in the modern world.

“Since
relativists have to admit that in our historical experience all the great
cultures of the past have destroyed themselves and the survival of the human
species has itself no guarantee, they are forced simply to accept the lack of a
firm foundation for morality as a tragedy of the human condition.”[2]

Relativism is
based on several arguments: the psychological, the cultural, social conditioning,
freedom, tolerance and situationalism. Peter Kreeft, in “A Refutation of Moral
Relativism,” deals with all these arguments by showing that “the most radical
threat to living morally today is the loss of moral principles.”[3]

He goes on to
argue for absolutism on the grounds of consequences, tradition, moral
experience and the moral language common to all men. Further, Kreeft says,
“Neither philosophy nor science nor logic nor common sense have ever refuted
traditional moral absolutism. Relativism is not rational; it is a
rationalization.”[4]

For those who
seek to live a life truly free and good, then, the need is to turn to revealed
truth through Scripture and the Church for guidelines. “God, who does not fail,
in creating us has built into our nature, for all its fragility, certain basic
needs and goals that ground a natural moral law and the human rights which flow
from it.”[5]